The first event after the official launch of Climate Week NYC 2010 focused on adaptation. Sponsored jointly be Swiss Re and The Climate Group, “Risk & Resiliency: Risk Transfer & Adaptation in Developing Economies” discussed the once-taboo notion of preparing now to deal with the inevitable effects that climate change will have in the future — an outcome that will occur even if society was able to completely stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere tomorrow.

Here is how the event’s hosts framed it:

Reducing carbon emissions is essential, but alone it is insufficient to meet the challenges of climate change. The current and potential impacts of severe weather will force society to increase its resilience through both physical and financial means.

There was a lot of interesting thoughts and perspectives to come out of the panel — and I will get to some of those in a later post. But first, I want to address the notion that some people are still resistant to looking past mitigation (i.e., reducing CO2 emissions) and promote/fund adaptation efforts.

The reason the momentum towards adaptation initiatives (something the UN discusses often and Time magazine explained well in layman’s terms — way back in 2007) was formerly frowned upon by most environmentalists — and still is by some — is because it is paramount to acknowledging that, at least on some level, the fight is already lost. Many have wanted politicians, businesses, nonprofits, scientists, engineers and everyone else who could help to focus solely on preventing climate change — not living with it.

“Talking about adaptation was almost an admission of defeat,” said Mark Kenber, deputy CEO of The Climate Group, a UK nonprofit that focuses on combating climate change.

Even Kenber himself admitted that he was once resistant to embracing adaptation. He now fully realizes that both sides of the equation are equally vital, however. And while the issue is less polarizing than it was in the past, some remain entrenched on the mitigation side.

Most have “seen the light” on embracing adaptation as well, but, practically, this historic divide has created a world where numerous governments have different sections that deal with mitigation/emissions reduction and adaptation. “That separation has become institutionalized,” said Kenber. And that still complicates things.

Many projects financed for their ability to combat climate change, for instance, get looked at through different lenses by different groups with different motivations. Kenber has seen certain projects in the developing world in which one group looked at them as aiding adaptation, another saw them as mitigation efforts and still a third wanted to claim them as assisting development goals.

But given how much climate change concerns effect development in much of the emerging world, this “debate” is like looking at a project and seeing it as six of one, a half-dozen of the other. Ultimately, all parties have the same goal — even if they don’t know it. As Kenber pointed out , the cruel reality of this fractured outlook on mitigation and adaptation is that “the worse we do on the former, the more we need to succeed on the latter,” he says.

If this was just about semantics, it wouldn’t be significant.

But it is more than that. It is about money — lots of money.

The experts on the panel suggested that $400 billion is needed throughout the world for adaptation initiatives. During climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, developed countries agreed to pool together some $30 billion to deal with climate change. Actual commitments beyond those that dovetailed with previous pledges have lagged, however.

This piece from Reuters breaks down the accounting.

Kenber said that, so far, $3.2 billion has actually been ponied up. That number is not the total that has been pledged with a “check’s in the mail” wink, but the actual committed funds. And of this, he says that barely $600 million is earmarked for adaptation efforts.

I’m not a mathematician, but $600 million seems a lot less than $400 billion.

So while it is nice that, rhetorically, many people now believe adaptation belongs alongside mitigation when talking about combating climate change, talk does little to build the dams and floodwalls that will be vital to the survival of the people in places like Pakistan and Bangladesh in the coming decades nor does it help provide the drought-resistant crops that will increasingly be needed if local agriculture is to continue being a viable means to feed people in places like Ethiopia and Malawai.

Mark Kenber of The Climate Group discussing adaptation to climate change during Climate Week NYC 2010. (Photo: Swiss Re)